WE ALL TRAVEL with lovers when we know we should be leaving them! These trips are meant to save us but we only tally up our losses by the end of them, having made it home in one piece. I lost my dignity barfing and shitting into the shared toilet down a dark hallway at our guesthouse, while my boyfriend slept on one of two cots in the damp room in Antigua.
We tried to make it all seem like a liberal arts school dream trip, replete with Spanish language courses and trips to museums to marvel at the ancient rings of gold around goddess necks. Our language teachers knew we’d come as a couple so they taught us both in the colonial courtyard surrounded with bright prink bougainvillea and we tried to tamp down the heated competition rising between us to nail difficult vocabulary.
I can’t even remember now if the Guatemala trip was followed by the Belize trip or vice versa but suffice it to say, we tried in multiple countries to save a relationship that was doomed to fail from the start—having begun in yet another country where we had no rhyme or reason except fate to bring us together—though we couldn’t know this when we met.
I was barely 21 when we met to his ancient 27. He’d worked with kids with special needs and wrote poetry and praised the hills of New Hampshire for their wildness. I’d only been with one other man in my entire life—my high school sweetheart—I thought latching on to this gentle soul would be my last stop on the train ride to security and safety.
But this was not our story—we traveled to places with barely a dime to our name and tried to enjoy the simple pleasures of these places without considering the risks to our safety or the sanity of our connection.
I remember once trekking to Fuentes Georginas hot springs up in the mountains and soaking in the milky, hot water that smelled like rotten eggs. Little did we know that armed bandits liked to rob unsuspecting tourists like us. Our days filled with bickering and indecision but we’d felt a bit of reprieve in the healing waters when we started to feel a bit suspicious of the guys we’d dined with at the local cafe serving heaping plates of black beans with rice and fried eggs.
That night, a loud bang on our front door had us frozen—then quaking— in bed. My boyfriend shouted at whomever was there on the other side of the door to go away but the banging just got louder and then we heard the clank and shake of the rusted lock on the other side—they were trying to get in and it terrified us. I have vague recollections of the two of us attempting to lug the one dresser in the room against the door as added protection. The knocking and banging lasted for what felt like hours—and then silence—and then birds.
It was early morning when we slipped out of there and headed back, somber and sober, to Antigua town, temporarily comforted by the excellent coffee served at a cafe teeming with sunburned tourists. But as we sipped our coffee, we could barely look at each other or talk about the night before or how miserable we both felt trying to pretend like we were at all curious about where we were—or happy with each other—or any of this.
These were also the days when I still ate food from street carts, thinking I had a duty as an aspiring poet to experience all layers and aspects and flavors of life. I remember walking around the night market and choosing a fried banana just by the alluring whiff of it. I sunk my wooden spoon into it and out oozed a black liquid that I assumed was chocolate. Yum, I ventured, taking a few more bites that only left a very bitter aftertaste. No, it wasn’t chocolate, it was thick, goopy rot.
This was the poison that had sent me to the toilet at that dingy guesthouse while my boyfriend slept through the night—over and over again I made the walk back and forth from the room to the toilet and swore I would never again arrange to stay anywhere without an attached bathroom. This was a kind of hell you only have to visit once to learn the lesson.
There’s more to this story—we stayed way longer than we should have in this chapter we were writing in our daily conflicts with each other. We tried to snorkel, I cut my hand. We tried to visit an ancient pyramid, we were attacked by mean-spirited monkeys. We tried to practice our Spanish, we got scammed. We tried to live together, we separated when he needed a hip replacement and I was running out of money as a waitress at a restaurant inside Whole Foods that no longer exists.
Side note: that restaurant always claimed to sell organic-only menu items, but more than once we ran out of the good stuff and we were actually sent down by my boss (who was always high on cocaine) to the produce section to grab whatever we could to make our veggie smoothies for our whiny clients.
This is all just to say, skip the vacation if you’re already fighting about the little things. We could barely agree on what to eat for dinner let alone where we might find bliss or make a new discovery about ourselves through exposure to hieroglyphics carved into ancient caves in the buggy jungle.
We tried to make it all seem like a liberal arts school dream trip, replete with Spanish language courses and trips to museums to marvel at the ancient rings of gold around goddess necks. Our language teachers knew we’d come as a couple so they taught us both in the colonial courtyard surrounded with bright prink bougainvillea and we tried to tamp down the heated competition rising between us to nail difficult vocabulary.
I can’t even remember now if the Guatemala trip was followed by the Belize trip or vice versa but suffice it to say, we tried in multiple countries to save a relationship that was doomed to fail from the start—having begun in yet another country where we had no rhyme or reason except fate to bring us together—though we couldn’t know this when we met.
I was barely 21 when we met to his ancient 27. He’d worked with kids with special needs and wrote poetry and praised the hills of New Hampshire for their wildness. I’d only been with one other man in my entire life—my high school sweetheart—I thought latching on to this gentle soul would be my last stop on the train ride to security and safety.
But this was not our story—we traveled to places with barely a dime to our name and tried to enjoy the simple pleasures of these places without considering the risks to our safety or the sanity of our connection.
I remember once trekking to Fuentes Georginas hot springs up in the mountains and soaking in the milky, hot water that smelled like rotten eggs. Little did we know that armed bandits liked to rob unsuspecting tourists like us. Our days filled with bickering and indecision but we’d felt a bit of reprieve in the healing waters when we started to feel a bit suspicious of the guys we’d dined with at the local cafe serving heaping plates of black beans with rice and fried eggs.
That night, a loud bang on our front door had us frozen—then quaking— in bed. My boyfriend shouted at whomever was there on the other side of the door to go away but the banging just got louder and then we heard the clank and shake of the rusted lock on the other side—they were trying to get in and it terrified us. I have vague recollections of the two of us attempting to lug the one dresser in the room against the door as added protection. The knocking and banging lasted for what felt like hours—and then silence—and then birds.
It was early morning when we slipped out of there and headed back, somber and sober, to Antigua town, temporarily comforted by the excellent coffee served at a cafe teeming with sunburned tourists. But as we sipped our coffee, we could barely look at each other or talk about the night before or how miserable we both felt trying to pretend like we were at all curious about where we were—or happy with each other—or any of this.
These were also the days when I still ate food from street carts, thinking I had a duty as an aspiring poet to experience all layers and aspects and flavors of life. I remember walking around the night market and choosing a fried banana just by the alluring whiff of it. I sunk my wooden spoon into it and out oozed a black liquid that I assumed was chocolate. Yum, I ventured, taking a few more bites that only left a very bitter aftertaste. No, it wasn’t chocolate, it was thick, goopy rot.
This was the poison that had sent me to the toilet at that dingy guesthouse while my boyfriend slept through the night—over and over again I made the walk back and forth from the room to the toilet and swore I would never again arrange to stay anywhere without an attached bathroom. This was a kind of hell you only have to visit once to learn the lesson.
There’s more to this story—we stayed way longer than we should have in this chapter we were writing in our daily conflicts with each other. We tried to snorkel, I cut my hand. We tried to visit an ancient pyramid, we were attacked by mean-spirited monkeys. We tried to practice our Spanish, we got scammed. We tried to live together, we separated when he needed a hip replacement and I was running out of money as a waitress at a restaurant inside Whole Foods that no longer exists.
Side note: that restaurant always claimed to sell organic-only menu items, but more than once we ran out of the good stuff and we were actually sent down by my boss (who was always high on cocaine) to the produce section to grab whatever we could to make our veggie smoothies for our whiny clients.
This is all just to say, skip the vacation if you’re already fighting about the little things. We could barely agree on what to eat for dinner let alone where we might find bliss or make a new discovery about ourselves through exposure to hieroglyphics carved into ancient caves in the buggy jungle.
